ACTORS, PARADIGMS, AND INSTITUTIONAL DYNAMICS: 1
The Theory of Social Rule Systems Applied to Radical Reforms
Tom R. Burns and Marcus Carson
DECEMBER, 2000
Appears in Rogers Hollingsworth K.H. Muller, E.J. Hollingsworth (eds) Advancing Socio-Economics: An Institutionalist Perspective. Rowman and Littlefield, Oxford, 2002
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We are grateful to Craig Calhoun, Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, Mats Franzen, Rogers Hollingsorth, Mark Jacobs, Masoud
Kamali, Nora Machado, Bryan Pfaffenberger, Steve Saxonberg, and Nina Witoszek for their comments and suggestions on
parts of earlier versions of this article.
1. The Universality of Social Rule Systems and Rule Processes
Most human social activity – in all of its extraordinary variety – is organized and regulated by socially produced and reproduced rules and systems of rules. Such rules are not transcendental abstractions. They are embodied in groups and collectivities of people – in their language, customs and codes of conduct, norms, and laws and in the social institutions of the modern world, including family, community, market, business enterprises and government agencies. The making,
interpretation, and implementation of social rules are universal in human society,
ias are their reformulation and transformation. Human agents (individuals, groups, organizations, communities, and other collectivities) produce, carry, and reform these systems of social rules, but this frequently takes place in ways they neither intend nor expect.
There is often a vigorous situational ”politics” to establishing, maintaining, and changing social rules and complexes of rules. Actors encounter resistance from others when they deviate from or seek to modify established rules. This sets the stage for the exercise of power either to enforce rules or to resist them, or to introduce new ones. Actors may disagree about, and struggle over, the definition or interpretation of the situation, the priority of the rule system(s) that apply, or the interpretation and adaptation of rules applied in the situation. Questions of power are central in our approach, since politics are typically associated with rule processes – especially those
organizing and regulating major economic and political institutitions. This includes not only the power to change or maintain social rules and institutional arrangements, but also the power
relationships and social control opportunities engendered by such arrangements. Many of the major struggles in human history revolve around the formation and reformation of core economic,
administrative, and political institutions of society, the particular rule regimes defining social relationships, roles, rights and authority, obligations and duties, and the "rules of the game" in these and related domains. The world changes, making rule system implementation problematic (even in the case of systems that previously were highly effective and robust). Consequently, there are pressures on actors to adjust, adapt, reformulate and reform their organizing principles and rules.Also, rules never specify completely or regulate actions fully (even in the most elaborate rituals and dramaturgical settings). The implementation of rules – and the maintenance of some order – always calls for cumulative experience, adjustment, adaptation, etc. In such ways, normative and institutional innovation is generated. There is a continual interplay – a dialectic, if you will – between the regulated and the unregulated (Lotman, 1975). Social situations – in continual flux and flow – persistently challenge human efforts to regulate and to maintain order. By means of rule systems and through the reform of established systems, social actors try to impose order on a changing, unstable, and sometimes chaotic world.
While social rule systems undergird much of the order of social life, not all regularities or patterns of social activity are explainable – or understandable – solely in terms of social rules.
Situational conditions may block the implementation of particular rules and rule systems in social activities or make it costly to do so. By shaping action opportunities and interaction possibilities, ecological and physical factors limit the range of potential rules that can be implemented and institutionalized in practice. Because concrete material conditions constrain actors from
implementing established rules in most situations, the actors are forced to adapt them. They may in
some instances even be compelled – or strongly motivated – to radically transform or replace them
in order to increase effectiveness, to achieve major gains, or avoid substantial losses. Thus, at the
same time that social rule systems strongly influence actions and interactions, they are formed and
reformed by the actors involved. Human agency is manifest in this dialectical process, with
particular actors having their specific competencies and endowments, their situational analyses, interpretations, and strategic responses to immediate pushes and pulls to which they are subject.
The implementation or application of rules and rule systems is often problematic and requires special cognitive and practical skills – a complex process in its own right (see Burns and Gomolinska (2000a, 2000b) on rule-following, rule application, and the realization of rules in practice). Actors’ cognitive and normative modes of analysis and judgment through which they apply or implement rules are organized through a shared, operative institutional paradigm. The latter includes not only knowledge of the rule system but also interpretative rules and learned capacities for semantic and pragmatic judgments relating to the application of the system. The operative paradigm mediates between an abstract and often ideal(ized) rule system, on the one hand, and concrete situations in which actors implement or realize a rule system and its practices, on the other. In a word, they situate or contextualize abstract rules in relevant action situations.
Social rule system theory formulates and applies an approach to the description and analysis of institutions such as bureaucracy, markets, political systems, and science – major orders in
modern societies. This entails more than a study of social structure, or a contribution to neo- institutionalism. It is a theory that analyses the links between social structure in the form of
particular institutional arrangements including role relationships, on the one hand, and social action and social interaction, on the other. The theory shows, for example, in what ways markets and bureaucracies are organized and regulated by social rules at the same time that actors, both inside and outside these institutions, maintain or change the organizing principles and rules through their actions and interactions.
iiThis article focuses particularly on processes of radical rule change and institutional dynamics where human agency plays a key role. An important feature of such change are the mechanisms – and consequences – of institutional reform and transformation.
2. Social Rules and the Patterning of Action
Social rule systems play a key role on all levels of human interaction. They provide more than potential constraints on action possibilities. They also generate opportunities for social actors to behave in ways that would otherwise be impossible, for instance, to coordinate with others, to mobilize and to gain systematic access to strategic resources, to command and allocate substantial human and physical resources, and to solve complex social problems by organizing collective actions. In guiding and regulating interaction, social rules give behavior recognizable, characteristic patterns, and make such patterns understandable and meaningful for those who share in the rule knowledge.
On the macro-level of culture and institutional arrangements, we speak of rule system complexes: language, cultural codes and forms, institutional arrangements, shared paradigms, norms and “rules of the game”.
iiiOn the actor level, we refer to roles, particular norms, strategies, action paradigms, and social grammars (for example, procedures of order, turntaking, and voting in committees and democratic bodies).
ivSocial grammars of action are associated with culturally defined roles and institutional domains, indicating particular ways of thinking and acting. In that sense, the grammars are both social and conventional. For instance, in the case of gift giving or reciprocity in defined social relationships, actors display a competence in knowing when a gift should be given or not, how much it should be worth, or, if one should fail to give it or if it lies under the appropriate value, what excuses, defenses and justifications might be acceptable.
Someone ignorant of these rules, e.g. a child or someone from a totally different culture would
obviously make mistakes (for which they would probably be excused by others). Similarly, in the
case of "making a promise," rule knowledge indicates under what circumstances a promise may or
may not legitimately be broken – or at least the sort of breach of a promise that might be considered
acceptable (Cavell, 1979:294). In guiding and regulating interaction, the rules give behavior
recognizable, characteristic patterns
v– making the patterns understandable and meaningfull for those sharing in the rule knowledge. Shared rules are the major basis for knowledgeable actors to derive, or to generate, similar situational expectations. They also provide a frame of reference and categories, enabling participants to readily communicate about and to analyze social activities and events. In such ways, uncertainty is reduced, predictability is increased. This is so even in complex situations with multiple actors playing different roles and engaging in a variety of interaction patterns. As Harre and Secord (1972:12) point out, “It is the self-monitoring following of rules and plans that we believe to be the social scientific analogue of the working of generative causal mechanisms in the processes which produce the non-random patterns studied by natural scientists.”
Social rule systems play then an important role in cognitive processes, in part by enabling actors to organize and to frame perceptions in a given institutional setting or domain. On the basis of a more or less a common rule system, questions such as the following can be intersubjectively and collectively answered: what is going on in this situation; what kind of activity is this; who is who in the situation, what specific roles are they playing; what is being done; why is this being done? The participating actors – as well as knowledgeable observers – can understand the situation in intersubjective ways. In a certain sense, they can simulate and predict what will happen in the interactions on the basis of the applied rules. Hence, our notion of rule-based paradigms that are interpretative schemes but also the concrete basis for actors to plan and judge actions and interactions.
viSocial rules are also important in normative and moral communications about social action and interaction. Participants refer to the rules in giving accounts, in justifying or criticizing what is being done (or not done), in arguing for what should or should not be done, and also in their social attribution of who should or should not be blamed for performance failures, or credited with
success. Actors also exploit rules when they give accounts in order to try to justify certain actions or failures to act, as part of a strategy to gain legitimacy, or to convince others that particular actions are "right and proper" in the context.
So called formal rules are found in sacred books, legal codes, handbooks of rules and regulations, or in the design of organizations or technologies that an elite or dominant group seeks to impose in a particular social setting. For instance, a formal organization such as a bureaucracy consists of, among other features, a well-defined hierarchical authority structure, explicit goals and policies, and clearcut specialization of function or division of labor. Informal rules appear less
"legislated" and more "spontaneous" than formal rules. They are generated and reproduced in ongoing interactions. The extent to which the formal and informal rule systems diverge or
contradict one another varies. Numerous organizational studies have revealed that official, formal rules are not always those that operate in practice. In some cases the informal unwritten rules not only contadict formal rules but take precedence over them under some conditions. Informal rules emerge for a variety of reasons. In part, formal rules fail to completely specify action (that is provide complete directions) or to cover all relevant (or emergent) situations. The situations (in which rules are applied or implemented) are particularistic, even idiosyncratic, whereas formal rules of behavior are more or less general. In some situations (expecially emergent or new
situations), actors may be uncertain or disagree about which rules apply or about the ways in which to apply them. They engage in situational analyses and rule modification, or even rule innovation out of which emerge informal rules (which may be formalized later).
However strongly actions are patterned by rules, social life is sufficiently complex that some imagination and interpretation are required in applying rules to a specific action and
interaction context. Imagination generates variability in action from actor to actor, and even for a given actor over time. Rules are also interpreted in their application. Even highly formalized, systematic rules such as laws and written rules of bureaucracy are never complete in their
specification. They have to be interpreted and applied using situational information and knowledge.
Adaptations and improvisations are common, even in the most formally organized institutions. In this sense, rules are generative, and their interpretation and implementation more or less context- dependent. Interpretation varies across a population sharing a rule system, and also across time. In addition, rules will sometimes be learned or implemented with error, providing in some cases an incorrect model for others. Both of these factors result in variability. Moreover, if an action at deviance with cultural rules or standard interpretations is perceived by other actors as advantageous, it may be copied. Its ability to spread, providing a new cultural variant, depends on three factors: (1) its perceived desirability; (2) the ability of those with interests in the content of the rule system to sanction the use of the new rule (and to overcome the opposition of others); (3) the difficulty in acquiring, retaining and implementing a rule at variance with core key social rules of the cultural system (Burns and Dietz, 1992a).
3. Adherence to and Compliance with Social Rules
Contemporary social science research points up that social rule systems such as cultural formations, institutional arrangements, and norms are ubiquitous and regulative of much social action and interaction. However, actors adhere to and implement rule and rule systems to varying degrees.
Compliance with, or refusal to comply with, particular rules are complicated cognitive and
normative processes. Typically, there are diverse reasons for rule compliance. Several of the most important factors are:
(1)Interest factors and instrumentalism (stressed by public choice and Marxist perspectives on self-interested behavior). Actors may advocate rules to gain benefits or to avoid losses. For
instance, interest groups introduce particular rules to exclude others from an institutionalized sphere or domain, whether a market, professional community or political system, thereby attaining a monopoly or exclusive sphere for themselves and other "in-siders". Such exclusionary rules may be enforced either by the authority of the state and/or by private authority (in the modern world private authority is often backed up by the state).
(2) Identity and status. Adherence to rules – and commitment to their realization – may be connected to an actor's identity, role, or status, and the desire to represent self as identified by or committed to particular rules. Elite actors are especially likely to be committed to a particular rule regime -- not only because of vested material interests but because their identity, status, and
meaning as significant social agents are closely associated with the rule regime, which defines their material and/or spiritual worth. It follows from the above that a major motivation in maintaining (or changing rules) – e.g. roles or distributive rules – is to maintain or change their social status.
(3) Authoritative Legitimacy. Many rules are accepted and adhered to because persons or groups with social authority have defined or determined them, possibly by associating them with sacred principles or identifying their causal or symbolic relationship to actors' interests and status. In the contemporary world, we find the widespread institutionalization of abstract meta-rules of
compliance that orient people to accepting particular definitions of reality and rule systems
propagated by socially defined and often certified authorities, e.g. scientists and other experts. The authority may be scientific, religious, or political (for instance in the latter case, the fact that a democratic agency has determined the rules according to right and proper procedures). Certain rules may even be associated with God, the sacred, and, in general, those beings or things that actors stand in awe of, have great respect for, and may associate with or share in their charisma by adhering to or following their rules.
(4) Normative-Cognitive Order. Actors may follow rules – and try to ensure that others follow
them – because the rules fit into a cognitive frame for organizing their perceptions and making
sense of what is going on. Within any given institutional domain, particular rules or systems of
rules make sense. For example, in a market context, certain norms of exchange have emerged,
found support, and been institutionalized. They facilitate exchange, in part by reducing risks and
transaction costs. In a certain sense, there is something reasonable about them (Boudon, 1995). In many functioning relationships and institutions, the participating agents seek trust and a sense of cooperativeness and order. Stealing, lying, cheating, murder, etc. violate basic principles of social order, of social solidarity and trust, and, therefore, are to a greater or lesser extent unacceptable.
They do not make sense in terms of the type of social relationship and development actors want or hope to develop. People react negatively – even in cases where they are not directly affected (that is, there are no direct apparent self-interests), because the order is disturbed, potentially
destabilized, and eroded.
(5) Social sanctions. Laws and formal organizational rules and regulations are typically backed up by specific social sanctions and designated agents assigned the responsibility and authority to enforce the rules. There are a variety of social controls and sanctions in any social group or organization which are intended to induce or motivate actors to adhere to or follow rules, ranging from coercion to more symbolic forms of social approval or disapproval, persuasion, and activation of commitments (in effect, "promises" that have already been made).
Social sanctioning (for example, by a moral community, or by an elite or their agents) may take the form of various types of social disapproval and symbolic sanctions as well as material and physical sanctions. Group or community norms are typically enforced through diffuse networks.
Group power rests in part on the individual's dependence on the group, and its ability to enable him or her to realize certain values or goals through the group (including the value of socialibility). In order to gain entrance or to remain in the group, one must comply with key group rules and role definitions. Exclusion from the group, if there are no alternative groups, becomes a powerful sanction.
(6) Inherent sanctions. Many rules, when adhered to in specific action settings, result in gains or payoffs that are inherent in following those rules, such as going with (or against) automobile traffic.
In many cases, the reasons for compliance are consequentialist. As Boudon (1996:20) points out: in automobile traffic, we adhere to or accept as right and proper traffic rules, in particular those relating to stopping, turning, etc. because without them, we recognize that the situation would be chaotic, dangerous, even catastrophric. Most technical rules, for example relating to operating machines or using tools, entail inherent sanctions. Following them is necessary (or considered necessary) for the proper functioning or performance of the technology, or achieving a certain desirable outcome or solution. Therefore, many technical rules are followed habitually. Disregard of or casualness in following the rules leads to failure, and even damage to the technology or to the actors involved. Because technical rules often have this compelling aspect to them, they can be used to gain acceptance, legitimacy, and resolve social conflicts, at the same time that they can advantage some actors and disadvantage others.
(7) Veil of ignorance. Actors may not know the consequences of rule compliance and follow rules because they are given, taken for granted, or believed generally to be right and proper. The benefits of adhering to some rule systems can, however, mask hidden costs. For example, adherence to stereotypical gender roles may produce an ease and certainty about what one "ought" to do, and elicit positive response from others, but it may also produce psychic conflicts and limit individual or collective development. Ignorance is one aspect of the cognitive frame actors utilize, or may derive from the type of complex situation in which they find themselves. Often data about the
consequences of implementing particular rule systems is not immediately available (or it concerns states of the world long in the future), and both internalized beliefs and authorities play a decisive role in addressing such states of ignorance. (9) Habits, routines, and scripts. Much rule-following behavior is unreflective and routine. Many social rules are unverbalized, tacit, that is, part of a collective subconscious of strategies, roles, and scripts learned early in life or career, and
reinforced in repeated social situations, for instance sex roles, or even many professional roles.
viiOf
particular importance is the fact that rule systems learned in early socialization are associated with
very basic values and meanings – even personal and collective identity – motivating at a deep emotional level commitment to the rules and a profound personal satisfaction in enacting them.
Conformity is then a matter of habitual, unreflected and taken-for-granted ways of doing things.
As indicated above, some social rules are enforced, others not: indeed, rules can be distinguished on the basis of the degree to which, and the circumstances under which, they are socially enforced or enforceable. Of course, regardless of the degree of enforceability, they may be complied with because of a desire for order, internal sanctions, or realizing one’s role and self- identity. Many rules that actors rigorously adhere to are not socially enforceable, but nevertheless actors utilize them in organizing social activities and in shaping social order. Harre and Secord (1972:17) emphasize the freedom of choice in relation to rules and roles:
The mechanistic model is strongly deterministic; the role-rule model is not.
Rules are not laws, they can be ignored or broken, if we admit that human beings are self-governing agents rather than objects controlled by
external forces, aware of themselves only as helpless spectators of the flow of physical causality.
In sum, actors conform to rule systems to varying degrees, depending on their identity or status, their knowledge of the rules, the meanings they attribute to them, the sanctions a group or organization imposes for noncompliance, the structure of situational incentives, and the degree competing or contradictory rules are activated in the situation, among other factors.
4. Institutions and Complex Institutional Arrangements
An institution is a complex of relationships, roles, and norms which constitute and regulate recurring interaction processes among participants in socially defined settings or domains. Any institution organizing people in such relationships may be conceptualized as an authoritative complex of rules or a rule regime (Burns et al, 1985; Burns and Flam, 1987). Institutions are exemplified by, for instance, family, a business organization or government agency, markets, democratic associations, and religious communities. Each structures and regulates social interactions in particular ways; there is a certain interaction logic to a given institution. Each institution as a rule regime provides a systematic, meaningful basis for actors to orient to one another and to organize and regulate their interactions, to frame, interpret, and to analyze their performances, and to produce commentaries and discourses, criticisms and justifications.Such a regime consists of a cluster of social relationships, roles, norms "rules of the game", etc. The system specifies to a greater or lesser extent who may or should participate, who is excluded, who may or should do what, when, where, and how, and in relation to whom. It organizes specified actor categories or roles vis-a-vis one another and defines their rights and obligations – including rules of command and obedience – and their access to and control over human and material resources.
More precisely: (1) An institution defines and constitutes a particular social order, namely positions and relationships, in part defining the actors (individuals and collectives) that are the legitimate or appropriate participants (who must, may, or might participate) in the domain, their rights and obligations vis-à-vis one another, and their access to and control over resources. In short, it consists of a system of authority and power; (2) It organizes, coordinates, and regulates social interaction in a particular domain or domains, defining contexts – specific settings and times – for constituting the institutional domain or sphere; (3) It provides a normative basis for appropriate behavior including the roles of the participants in that setting – their interactions and
institutionalized games – taking place in the institutional domain; (4) The rule complex provides a
cognitive basis for knowledgeable participants to interpret, understand and make sense of what goes
on in the institutional domain; (5) It also provides core values, norms and beliefs that are referred to in normative discourses, the giving and asking of accounts, the criticism and exoneration of actions and outcomes in the institutional domain. Finally, (6) an institution defines a complex of potential normative equilibria which function as “focal points” or “coordinators” (Schelling, 1963; Burns and Gomolinska, 2001).
Most modern institutions such as business enterprises, government agencies, democratic associations, religious congregations, scientific communities, or markets are organized and
regulated in relatively separate autonomous spheres or domains, each distinguishable from others on the basis of distinctive rule complexes and each of which contributes to making up a specific moral order operating in terms of its own rationality or social logic). The actors engaged in an institutional domain are oriented to the rule system(s) that has (have) legitimacy in the context and utilize it (them) in coordinating, regulating, and talking about their social transactions.
Many modern social organizations consists of multi-institutional complexes. These combine, for instance, different types of institutionalized relationships such as market, administration,
collegial, and democratic association as well as various types of informal networks. When different institutional types are linked or integrated into multi-institutional complexes, the resultant structure necessarily entails gaps and zones of incongruence and tension at the interfaces of the different organizing modes and social relationships (Machado and Burns, 1998). For instance, a modern university consists of scientific and scholarly communities, administration, democratic bodies with elected leaders, and internal as well as external market relationships. Such diverse organizing modes are common in most complex organizations or inter-institutional complexes. Rule system theory identifies several of the institutional strategies and arrangements including rituals, non-task- oriented discourses, and mediating or buffer roles that actors develop and institutionalize in dealing with contradiction and potential conflicts in complex, heterogeneous institutional arrangements (Machado and Burns, 1998). Moreover, it suggests that social order – the shaping of congruent, meaningful experiences and interactions – in complex organizations, as in most social life, builds not only on rational considerations but on non-rational foundations such as rituals and non-
instrumental discourses. These contribute to maintaining social order and providing a stable context, which is essential for “rational” decision-making and action.
5. Paradigms and Institutional Arrangements.
The actors involved in a given institution use their institutional knowledge of relationships, roles, norms, and procedures to guide and organize their actions and interactions. But they also use it to understand and interpret what is going on, to plan and simulate scenarios, and to refer to in making commentaries and in giving and asking for accounts. Rule system theory stresses rule-based cognitive processes such as framing, contextualizing, and classifying objects, persons, and actions in a relevant or meaningful way (Burns and Engdahl, 1998a,1998b; Burns and Gomolinska 2000a, 2001; Carson, 1999, 2000a; Nylander, 2000). It also considers the production of appropriate or meaningful accounts, discourses, and commentaries in the context of the given institution.
Institutional rule knowledge is combined with other types of knowledge as actors engage in judgment, planning, interpretation, innovation, and application of rules. Such organization of rule knowledge and its applications – in perceptions, judgments, and actions – is accomplished through a shared cognitive-normative frame which we refer to as an institutional paradigm. It provides people a basis on which to organize and to define and try to solve concrete problems of
performance and production in a given institutional domain (others using paradigm in this sense are
Carson, 2000a, 2000b; Dosi, 1984; Dryzek, 1996; Gitahy, 2000; Perez, 1985).
viiiOur conception
is builds upon institutional concepts such as rules and procedures as well as social relationships
such as those of authority; it concerns the organization and regulation of concrete activities and the
solution of concrete problems of action as much as the modeling and explanation of events. In acting and interacting within an institutional arrangement, social agents operate with one or more institutional paradigms as well as supportive discourses.
An operative institutional paradigm – associated with a particular institution – is a cognitive-normative framework which institutional participants use to contextualize and situate a rule system in concrete settings, as they define, make interpretations, carry out situational analyses, and make judgments concerning the application or implementation of the rule regime, or parts of it.
At the core of such a paradigm is the rule regime itself – that is, the key organizing principles, values, norms, relationships, and roles that give form and identity to the institution – used in constituting and regulating interactions in appropriate settings. The rules and principles in the core are idealized in a certain sense.
ixAlso found in such a paradigm – but more peripherally and discretionary – are the rules of interpretation, rules defining practical situational conditions to take into account, “rules of thumb,” and other rules for making adjustments or adaptations of core rules and principles in some settings.
In sum, paradigms are actors’ operative cognitive models, used in their concrete judgments and interactions to contextualize institutional rules, to conduct situational analyses, and to apply rules in their actions and interactions in the institutional domain. These operative models are constructed on the basis of core institutional rules and principles and incorporate complexes of beliefs, classification schemes, normative ideas, and rules of thumb which are used in
conceptualizing and judging key institutional situations and processes, relevant problems, and possible solutions for dealing with key problems.
Single rules or rule systems are adjusted and compromised in concrete, practical interaction situations, taking into account situational or local conditions. Also, integrated into the operative paradigm – in its periphery – are rules of pragmatic interpretation and analysis, local styles and other cultural elements including values, norms, special social relationships that are not right and proper or legitimate parts of the institutional regime. The core and periphery components of an operative institutional paradigm are indicated in Figure 1.
FIGURE 1 ABOUT HERE
Clearly, (an idealized) system of rules, is part and parcel of the paradigm is institutionalized in particular arrangements and practices.
xAlthough obviously interlocked, institutions and paradigms are affected differently in change processes, particularly those driven by tangible institutional problems. If, on the one hand, actors have a great investment in protecting the concrete institutional arrangements themselves, for reasons of power, security, predictability, and so on, rules are
tightened, enforcement mechanisms are deployed, even strengthened (as in Michels’s Iron Law of
Oligarchy (1962)). The emphasis is on protecting ideas and principles that are already materialized,
and sometimes this is done at great cost. If, on the other hand, actors have – or would like to make -
- a much greater investment in solving a problem(s) that the institutional arrangement and its
operating paradigm have proven unable to manage, the actions taken are quite different. Rules are
consciously broken in spite of possible or likely sanctions, supporters are rallied around possibilities
rather than certainties, and short-term, concrete interests may be set aside in favor of long term
possibilities. There is a substantial shift in risk-taking orientations.
PERIPHERY: SEMANTICS, PRAGMATICS USED IN CONTEXTUALIZING, SITUATING,
INTERPRETING, ADJUSTING THE RULE REGIME.
CORE:
INSTITUTIONAL RULE REGIME
OPERATIVE
INSTITUTIONAL PARADIGM FOR IMPLEMENTING OR
REALIZING A RULE REGIME IN
APPROPRIATE CONTEXTS.